Tweak's takes you on a tour of his own signal chain

Today a
home studio can rival a
professional studio's sound, given you pay attention to every element of
your signal path. Rather than use the compromised path offered by all-in-one
audio interfaces, I suggest you replace the functions that have less
than stellar audio capabilities with those that do. Let me be clear,
the components that a high end professional studio use will still exceed
those from this gear. But by much less of a margin than if you just
went though your typical better quality audio interface. The
difference in sound is striking.

The
FMR Really nice Preamp is know throughout recording communities as
the a preamp with a surprising high end, open sound for under $500. See my
review

The Lucid AD9624is a 2 channel analog to digital converter known for
clear sonics at 24 or 16 bit, at samples rates of 44.1, 48 and 96 kHz.
It can be switched to stereo mode where the top level control affects both
channels, or may be used as 2 independent channels, which is great for mono
recording. The metering helps you keep your signal from your preamp
from overdriving the converter and gives an accurate reference of what you
are actually recording.

You can add any audio interface to this system, as long as
it has s/pdif. I have the MOTU
828mk2 and choose it for its generous i/o. It's preamps and
converters are not bad, but you won't have to use them with this system.
Indeed one of the first things I did was an A/B comparison when I put this
chain together. It was like removing a veil of crud between the mic
and the speakers. See my
review.

The
Presonus Central Station is more than just a monitor switcher and
headphone amp, though it does those chrores well. It also has an
excellent DA converter which can take the digital signal coming out of your
audio interface via s/pdif and put it in analog form for your monitoring
system. See my
review.

The Mackie
HR 824 active monitors can be found in studios world wide.
While choosing monitors can be a subjective thing, the Mackie sound does not
disappoint. For critical mastering you might want to choose something
else as the Mackies exceed many other speaker systems and don't translate as
well. But for hearing the fine details of your work, and hearing the
quality of your recordings I think they are an excellent value. See my
review.

The Cost

In the sidebar you see the approximate cost of all the
items together, which as of this writing will cost you $3685. You can
cut the cost a little and not compromise quality by going with a less
expensive audio interface. Just about any audio interface with decent
drivers that has the i/o you need will do. (It has to have s/pdif
i/o). That could save about $400 or so. You might also consider the
DynAudio BM5 as your monitors to save another 260. Many argue those
will be more accurate and better suited for mixing and mastering. But
we could argue all day about that! That would take you down to almost
$3,000. I'd not swap anything else out.

Of course you can always make this signal path sound even
better with a higher quality preamp like the
Presonus
ADL600 the
Phoenix DRS2, or those by Great River, Avalon, Universal Audio, Grace
and of course many others. Here's a page of some of the
better preamps available. You could also outfit the system with 2
mono preamps rather than a 2 channel preamp, or better yet, get a patchbay
so you can switch between your favorite two channel preamp and your favorite
mono preamp. That is what I do.